According to a new report, which looked at the cancer rates of 27 member states in the, Britain has the highest number of lung cancer deaths among women.
Despite positive predictions that breast cancer deaths will fall by 9% this year in Britain, lung cancer is continuing to claim the lives of women, with more than 39,000 of women diagnosed a year, claiming 15,000 lives.
The research compiled by the Annals of Oncology journal focused on the whole of the EU and six individual countries, the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.
Researchers discovered that 21.4 per 100,000 women in Britain are struck down with lung cancer. Poland ranked second place with 16.9 per 100,000 women.
The increasing number of women dying from lung cancer each year has worried leading cancer charities, who believe that attractive cigarette packaging play a key role into the rising numbers.
Catherine Thomson, head of statistical information, at Cancer Research UK, told The Huffington Post: "This latest study from the EU is in line with previous research, which shows that generally death rates from cancer in the UK are predicted to fall.
“This is true for breast and bowel cancers and lung cancer in men – reassuring news that highlights the impact of men stopping smoking, the introduction of new therapies and diagnostics, and how the NHS has improved treatment delivery. But according to this study lung cancer death rates in women seem to be still climbing.
“This is a worrying trend. Smoking prevention is the key to reducing lung cancer rates as smoking causes over 8 out of 10 lung cancer cases. Most smokers start under the age of 18, so efforts to dissuade both boys and girls from starting to smoke in the first place must be continued.
“One important step is to remove the displays of cigarettes in shops – which is being rolled out in large stores and supermarkets in April. Tobacco companies have used the cigarette pack to appeal to new smokers over recent years.
“Cancer Research UK is also urging the government to remove all branding from tobacco packets and sell this deadly product in plain, standardised packets with large health warnings front and back.”
The Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) believes the statistics reflect on how tobacco companies have, and still do, deliberately target women.
Referring to the post-war adverts and the colourful cigarette packaging today, Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, says:
“Women are reaping the consequences of industry marketing of cigarettes as a symbol of independence and freedom – instead it’s bringing them illness and death.
“Men used to smoke more but rates have dropped and now the gap has closed. Teenage girls are more likely to smoke at an earlier age than boys and that makes them more vulnerable to damage to their health.
“We need plain packaging of cigarettes. Attractive ‘pretty’ packets make cigarettes appealing to women, but there is a big price to pay. Even today six out of ten teenage mothers is a smoker. This isn’t an accident, the tobacco industry deliberately targets young women with products like “super slims” in what they call ‘perfume packs’”.
Although almost 1.3m people will die of cancer in Europe this year, the death rate is on a steady decline, with a 10% fall in cancer-related deaths for men, and 7% for women.
Looking at Europe as a whole, the study predicted that 717,398 men and 565, 703 women in the EU would die from cancer in 2012. This is compared to 706,619 male and 554,515 female deaths in 2007.
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Take a look at our round-up of tobacco TV advertising campaigns between 1950 to 1960.